Background for Flak I

[Moresco]

do you use lots of layers?

i'd black out in flat colours parts of the scene, like the walls and the stairs and the posts on seperate layers, then start working on them with preserve transparency turned on. then you can't go out of the lines and you'll maintain your crisp edges

eric

Hey Eric, I like what you did with those edits. Very crisp, & I really see where you're going with it, but I think you have overestimated my photoshop skills

Do I use layers...yes, but I'm not sure I 'get' them just yet. Maybe so you can work without having to worry about mistakes? I'm not sure.

Blackout with flat colors...on seperate layers with preserve transparency?? Please expand in as much detail as possible...I'm just not sure what you mean.  Now, it's not that I have NO idea what you're talking about...but it's just that I've been working in Photoshop for maybe..what...2 weeks tops?  Everything I've ever drawn has been on paper & well, this is just a bit frustrating I must say. Ok thanks for the help!

[DinghyDog]

Layers in photoshop are like separate images. When you view them all, it shows them in the space of one image, as in piling them on top of each other, and the layers that are higher on the list take precedent in the z-index (as in, above the ones below it). You can edit individual layers, make some of them, say, 50 percent transparant, or 20, or something. Here's an example.



Hastily made, I know, but you get the point. It's just a green sliding door, but it's about 50% transparent. See?

Most of photoshop work is messing around with the tools/filters/stuff and seeing what happens. I use noise a lot for concrete, and grain for wood, and all sorts of good gimmicks. I think what they were talking about, is to use transparency in conjunction with outlining all the important lines to get rid of the blurryness effect. If you don't make the lines really opaque, you can get away with it.

-DD

[Moresco]

Ok so I think I get the idea so far.  Not sure how good at this I am, but with any luck, the overall look will improve.

Thanks Dinghy, for the explanation & that cool example! ^^

Now, let's see what I did was, basically outlined everything in about 7 or 8 different layers(I didn't really count).  Then, I changed the opacity for all the layers & used the dodge/burn tools to change some of the coloring to make it outline better.  After that, I threw in some grain filters to see what it'd look like with less smudginess to it.

This first one has no stair work done on it:


Then I did the stairs and maybe a few other things, I need to clean up the stairs more, but I'm getting tired of this background to be honest so I'll start working on another one and come back to it more tomorrow.

[MrColossal]

what version of photoshop are you running?

[Moresco]

I'm running 7.0, though I have 6 around here as well someplace...

[MrColossal]

ah good i have 7 too, i'll write up a quick tutorial of what i mean and post it

edit, and here it is

http://sylpher.com/kafka/junk/edits/stairs.htm

hope it helps, if you have any other questions about this go ahead and ask

eric

[pessi will yell at me for using dodge and burn so much]

[DinghyDog]

Ah. Getting tricky with it, I see...sheesh, that's insanely cool. I'll never be as good of an artist as half the peeps on this board. Oh well, I'll stick with my strange green sliding glass doors and hijacked sprites.

-DD

[Moresco]

Hey Eric I cannot tell you how helpful your tutorial was, just reading through it.  For one, I never thought to rotate my image for the purpose of making things easier on me...heh.  Also, I don't have a tablet but will probably invest in one as I'm better with a pencil than a mouse.  The mouse NEVER goes in the direction I tell it to.   Grr @ mousey.


To Eric: Goes without saying now anyway  

[MrColossal]

hehe no worries, we're here to help eachother

also the whole using the flat colours to block out the parts of the scene should only be used if you're taking an unlayered image and layering it, there wouldn't be much need to do it if you already have layers

but i'm sure that goes without saying

eric

[Moresco]

Heh, pretty sure I posted this, but I guess I hit preview & left it hanging...oops.  Well here's what I've been working on so far:



And more recently, you can actually start to make out the underneath of the stairs:



Lemme know what you think Eric, am I heading in the right direction or am I lost in the sea of smudginess?

[MrColossal]

i think the most important thing is if you like it.

the technique i showed you is quite easy no? the only things that i can comment on at the moment is [but these are things that can easily change later on] that there are more than one light source, and the original wood colour on the right, the wall, is a nice brightly lit nice day outside colour

and the new wood seems different. but like i said easily changed through photoshop.

I may revise the tutorial a little cause personally:



this is the best part of the image that i came up with. cause it has more colours in it acting with eachother making the beam all sexy and nice.

which is the reason the right wall looks so good in your image, cause there are so many colours in there playing with eachother in nice ways. how did you paint that wall by the way?

eric

[Moresco]

Scanned some pics of the walls in my room & used the droplet tool to grab the colors.  Then, I smudged it in the direction it was supposed to go...mostly anyway.  As you could tell from the first edit you did of the wall, it was not very defined.  I really like what you did with it.   I've never painted anything before this, just to let you know.

EDIT: Oh yah and your beam is making me seriously jealous over here! My beam is laughable, and my kid could probably do better.

[MrColossal]

well for not painting i think you're doing a good job.

as for the beams, i think it just comes from practice and restraint. as in i've fiddled with this for longer so i know easily how to get what i want. just keep at it and you'll rock it

a tablet is a good investment if you feel that it is necessary. as you said you can use a pencil easier than a mouse and i'd recommend a Wacom Graphire cause it is of a very high quality and cheap

it seems small but any bigger and you're running into the 300's of dollars and if you go with an Aiptek like i did, you get a huge drawing surface but a pretty shoddy tablet

so wacom's the way to go.

eric

[Ciro Durán]

FYI, pixel blurring in computer graphics is done by averaging the surrounding pixels (typically the 3x3 area around it).  I don't remember well about sharpening, I think it's by averaging the surrounding pixels except the center pixel.

[Moresco]

Well, that's interesting but I don't quite understand how exactly you average pixels.  I'm sure I will just make do by learning as I go along.

[Ciro Durán]

It's a bit deeper explanation, in a bitmap image each pixel has a specific color, made of three values: red, green and blue, each of these values can take any number from 0 to 255 (total of colors a pixel can take = 255*255*255 = 2^32, that's why it's called 32-bit). When I say averaging, I'm saying that you take each pixel, and average the values of the three primary colors. I wish I had a site that explained this better, I'm sure there are a lot out there, but I hope it was enough educational for you .

BTW, you don't have to know this to make your blurring better, as the computer does this automatically for you, and the blurring has to look good for you, no matter how the blurring is done .

[Moresco]

Well this background is pretty much done right now, so I'm gonna move onto another one & come back to it when my skills have improved.  

Ciro: I never thanked you for that explanation. While I already knew about the color values, the averaging of them was new information.  

Eric:  About the colors being different, I know the new wood is darker but you made it look so good I had to try and achieve that. ^^